What is all this Stuff about Anger Management

I have a problem with anger management - I get angry more often than I like, and usually find it hard to control my anger. Over the years, I have spent as much effort working on it as on time management, but got only moderate success. In this post, I am going to take a closer look at this challenge. Hopefully it will help me find a better way to deal with it, and since this is a very common problem, the ideas discussed here may resonate with you as well.

Why do I get angry? 

I get angry for a variety of reasons. As an example, some of the situations that make me see red are:

• Things do not turn out the way I want them to
• Someone shows a lack of respect towards me
• Someone close hurts me by doing something that I did not expect from him / her
• An argument with someone who is bent upon proving me wrong
• Someone does not keep his / her commitment and is cool about it
• When people commit blunders and try to justify them rather than apologize
• When people show insensitivity towards my feelings 
• When I am blamed for something that is not my fault
• ...

What do I do when I am Angry?

What I do when I feel angry varies depending on the intensity of anger and the exact situation:

• There are rare times when I let my anger out in a burst, and at times this even has the effect of the situation getting corrected, but it never ends up in a good feeling. It reinforces my dubious reputation as a fussy person.
• More often, expressing my anger results in ugly situations, emotional exchanges, and charged discussions that go nowhere - the resulting feeling is nothing less than frustration. It simply spoils the relationship.
• At times, I choose to keep quiet about my anger, and this keeps the feeling burning inside me. The anger causing behavior continues as the person does not know that I am mad about it.
• I may also try to get even with the person by doing something that makes him mad. Well this starts a destructive game and erodes the relationship.
• In some cases, I may let out my anger in the absence of the person, talking about it to someone else. It helps let the steam out for the moment, but my experience is that this causes more problems in a relationship than it solves. The golden rule to follow in a relationship is that if you can not say it on his face, do not say it behind his back either.   

Do you also do some of these things when angry?

Is being Angry a bad thing?

I am aware from my early childhood that anger is not good for me and causes severe disruption in day-to-day life:

• When I am angry, I am generally overpowered by emotions and out of control, which brings out the worst in me and makes me say things I would not normally say. Not something that I relish really. All of us have experienced at least once making a fool of ourselves in a meeting due to anger.
• When we are angry, we use harsh words to hurt the people whom we love. This causes an emotional wound. If the relationship is strong, the wound may get healed with time, but the scar still remains.
• The state of being angry is diametrically opposite to state of being happy. So when I am angry, I can not be happy at the same time, how-so-ever hard I try.
• Every time I feel angry, it produces mental and physical stress, and If I do it more often, it is sure to spoil my health.
• Anger makes meaningful communications impossible. Ever tried to have a objective discussion when you are seething with anger inside?
• In general I have found from experience that I am more effective with others when I am not angry,  and anger comes in my way of getting the results that I want. 

How to Eliminate Anger?

Armed with this awareness about ill effects of anger, I have tried really hard to eliminate it from my life, but it is easier said than done. Here is a summary of the ideas I have tried over the years to manage my anger with varying degree of success:

• Taking Ownership - I had to  learn to take responsibility for my anger. It is easy to fix the blame on others for your angry reaction, and their action may be the triggering cause for it, but I realized that I choose to be angry in the given situation. This is the most fundamental lesson in anger management (Anger Management 101).  Once I become responsible for my angry reaction, 50% of the problem is resolved, as I become committed to work on myself, and not expect the world to change according to my wish.
• Avoid Unnecessary Confrontations - There are situations that you know will involve confrontation and invoke anger in you. I learned to foresee such situations, and avoided them if these are not necessary. This reduces the anger episodes, but there is a thin line between necessary and unnecessary, so when you are not prepared to handle them, you tend to avoid even the necessary discussions.
• Detect and Control it early - Anger is like a fire. If you do not detect it early and take steps to control, it may soon spread and become impossible to control. So, I learned to notice early signs of an anger building up and to try to prevent it from spreading.
• Pause and Think - Anger takes away your ability to think and react. But if you deliberately pause and think before reacting, it will get your mind working again, and will help you exercise some control over your emotions. This is the top most idea that never fails to work for me.
• Keep Quiet - Silence can be better than a heated exchange, but it is not the most effective way in all situations. It is certainly a useful technique in situations where you are getting into a meaningless argument unnecessarily.
• Listen - We are so much focused on our own emotions that we fail to understand where the other person is coming from. If we listen carefully and try to understand the other person, we may find out the real reason behind an apparently insensitive act. This will act like pouring water on the fire.
• Talk - Learn to stay in dialog when angry. Convey your feelings in a non-offensive manner. "I felt really hurt when you said this". Focus on facts and actions, but do not try to label the person. 
• Forgive - Learn to forgive and forget. This is particularly best strategy when the person causing the anger is not available for an objective discussion. But even in face-to-face discussions, you can have a more meaningful dialog when you start by forgiving the other person.
• Be Happy - I said earlier that the state of being angry is diametrically opposite to state of being happy. So when I am angry, I can not be happy at the same time and vice-versa. Use this information to your advantage. Try to be positive and happy when experiencing anger. It will drive away the anger instantly.
• Sleep over it - It will pass too. In some cases, just give it some time and the anger will subside on its own.
• Analyze your feelings - It helps to sit down with a pen and paper and try to answer the following questions when you are angry, worried, or frustrated:
• What am I angry about?
• What has caused it?
• What can I do about it?
• Immerse in action - This works well because when you are busy in action, you do not have the time for thinking angry thoughts. 
• Learn to Accept - Most important skill in life. You can not expect everything to go according to your wish, so you need to know how to accept things. It is summarized by the following prayer:

         God, give me the strength to change the things I can,
         the serenity to accept the things I can't,
         and the wisdom to know the difference between the two.